Cape Town gallery Southern Guild has announced that it will open a branch in Los Angeles, becoming the first South African gallery to establish a permanent US outpost (Goodman Gallery, which has branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and London, revealed last month that it would open an office and viewing room in New York). The gallery, which specializes in African art and design, will occupy a former Hollywood laundromat. Southern Guild cofounders Trevyn and Julian McGowan have hired Evan Raabe Architecture, who previously designed Hauser & Wirth’s Los Angeles outpost and Christie’s Beverly Hills, to oversee the project. The firm will divide the structure’s 5,000 square feet into three identically sized exhibition spaces.
Hollywood’s name has long been synonymous with the entertainment business. More recently, the neighborhood has become home to such blue-chip East Coast enterprises as James Fuentes, Sargent’s Daughters, and David Zwirner as well as to local galleries including Sebastian Gladstone and Morán Morán.
“We appreciate the vibrancy of the neighborhood, not just from the galleries there, but also the restaurants and local communities,” Trevyn McGowan told The Art Newspaper. “Our openings tend to be large parties with ceremony and ritual and different immersive experiences. As a gallery, we are quite disruptive and progressive, and we felt like Los Angeles would be accepting of an innovative art space. The city is similar to Cape Town in that there is a sense of youth and vibrancy. We were concerned New York might be more prescriptive, and it’s certainly more saturated than Los Angeles.”
Southern Guild opened in Cape Town in 2008. Since then, it has gained a reputation for showcasing artists with close ties to the African continent, whose work straddles the boundaries of art and functional design. The gallery is making its debut presentation at the Armory Show in New York, which opens today.
“We have a residency program in Cape Town, and we’d like to have one in LA as well, with LA artists coming [to Cape Town] and Cape Town artists going to California,” Julian McGowan told Art News. “We feel that this narrative of cultural exchange is our entryway into the US and specifically into in California. Through that, we believe that we will find our audience.”
